There has been so much media discussion of late about such entities in Australia as “the Muslim community” and “the Muslim vote”. Which raises the question: Do such entities exist? For starters, there are so many varieties of Muslim believers – primarily focused on the majority Sunnis and the minority Shiites. And then there are Muslim [...]
Mark Scott, the vice-chancellor and president of the University of Sydney, is a genuinely nice and gentle man. Or such is my personal experience. But also profoundly weak. And that’s a considerable flaw in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and the flow-on of this event to Australia. I knew Scott [...]
It took a joke at the Jerry Seinfeld live show at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney last Sunday to illustrate the essential aim of some pro-Palestinian protesters in Sydney, Melbourne and some other Australian cities. The Jewish American Seinfeld’s performance was interrupted by a man who identified himself as Aboud. He asserted that the comedian [...]
Two words explain the ABC’s current predicament; namely, diversity and denial. That’s about it. Unlike the commercial media at a time of increasing competition and declining advertising revenue, the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster is guaranteed more than $1bn annually for the next five years. In this sense the ABC has no real problems. But it is [...]
Once upon a time, from the 1940s to the ’80s, strikes were rampant in Australia, hitting hard at the transport, energy, construction and manufacturing industries. Particularly in the lead-up to Christmas when there was invariably a strike, or a threat to take industrial action, in the breweries. In those days, a pub at Christmas with [...]
Have you heard the story about the experienced Australian journalist who maintains that an accurate report of an on-the-record panel discussion may amount to an attack on free speech? Last Sunday, The Australian’s media reporter Sophie Elsworth attended the final day of the Sydney Writers Festival. Her focus was on the session titled Barrie Cassidy [...]
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Britain has called a relatively early election for July 4. He could have gone to the polls as late as the end of January next year, with November this year an attractive alternative. Who knows? But the likelihood is that Sunak wants to get his political suffering out of the [...]
The concept of alienation has been a feature of Western democracies for at least a century. It manifests itself in the dislike, sometimes hatred, some citizens have for their nation. Invariably it is rationalised, even propelled, by alienated intellectuals and journalists. In the period between the two world wars, alienation was mainly found on the [...]
Perhaps the most memorable image in the Australian political debate this week was the video of a young Monash University student sitting on the ground, Israeli flag in hand. He was towered over by a group of some five pro-Palestinian students, one of whom was screaming at him with a speaker held to the lone [...]
In December 1969, I wrote an article for Quadrant magazine titled “The derived nature of the Australian new left”. What was the new left over half a century ago would present as the green left today. My point was that the extreme left in Australia was proudly anti-American. Yet, on university campuses, new left members [...]